Smiles
by Duilin
Summary: \I know that my brothers consider me mad, for smiling at the most inconvenient times, but I only smile…because no one else will./ Genre: insanity/post-trauma


**Days of being dormant have kind of come to an end. No, they're still raging on. Been busy lately; very sorry. ****This is something that I was pretty sure I was sleep-writing while drinking coffee.**

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><p>He hallucinates, these days. I hear him scream sometimes, and my right hand curls instinctively into a ball, and I bring my nails to sink through my palms, my own flesh, so I know that it is still there. Truly, I had never really known the difference between a scream and a shout until now. I wish I didn't know.<p>

Perhaps it's the work of Morgoth, or an aftermath of mangling his wrist and his psyche, but Maedhros isn't really in his right mind. Not to say that I am either, though I smile at myself in the mirror often to reassure myself that I am.

He wishes he had his right hand instead, rather than a right mind, but he seems to have lost both. At times, he doesn't remember. He doesn't remember, and though I don't force him to recall, he does it just as well by himself. He tries to use his right hand again. That's when he gets out of control, and I am the first person he sees.

_Two voices screaming. _

_Is one of them mine? _

_I do not know. _

_All I can feel is my throat, dry and hoarse, for I have been singing, singing for quite a long time, against Maedhros, and my voice is raised for everyone to hear, but his voice raises even higher, and I cannot overcome it. I do not scream—I cannot scream, for I am, in not a literal sense, trapped, bound and gagged, and prostrated on the dirt for everyone to see; for everyone to see the helpless, worthless creature I am, dressed in rags instead of the uniform of the nobility…but I still live, I still ignore them, I ignore the voices in my head, the voices that will not __**go away**__—_

I write this with a bruised jaw as Maedhros is being calmed down by our half-cousin Fingon. Even though he claims that his left hand is weak, he can throw quite a punch with it on instinct, though I am not sure instinct allows one to attack his brother.

He is shouting now, thankfully not screaming, and mayhap I had accidently left my blood on his hand? Then he could possibly be reminded of the Incident That Should Not Be Named, the staining of the chain with crimson and scarlet, fresh and dry, like dyeing fabric with vermillion, but I am not sure; being tormented by the loss of a limb—and to not even have it with you for memory—probably distracts many from past, albeit recent, misdeeds.

_He is crying now, though crying silently, mouth open with inaudible screams as I kneel down next to him, and I can feel his body shudder with the stress of having just lost a limb as I wrap my arms around him, and his nails dig through my clothes, into my skin, but how can he, the strongest of us all, break down and cry? How can he, as the eldest brother, the leader of our misfit gang, and our forsaken, cursed bodies with empty spirits to fill it, allow himself to show weakness?_

_I do not know._

I do not remember much these days—except for the giant, dreadful ceremony of Thorondor arriving, Fingon and a pallid, ashen Maedhros that he cradled in his arms gently, on Thorondor's back, and the acrimonious resentment that accompanied it.

_I would not speak to Fingon. I refused to see him, out of my own anger, out of my own madness. He, instead of releasing at least one of us from our horrible fate, condemned Maedhros to live yet again out of his own valiant deed, but this time worse, for my brother, my cursed, my dear brother, was missing a hand. Several times, I mustered the courage to face Fingon, to face him and tell him of my gratitude, though it was no doubt inexistent and instead concealing hatred, but I failed to do so after seeing him beside Maedhros' bedside._

"How do you feel?" Celegorm asks me, a frown on his face as his light fingers skim across my bruise. The quill falls to the floor, forgotten, with ink splatters across the table as I realize that I am not really writing, but dragging my right hand across the paper. At least it's still there, my right hand, but it is smudged with black, dark liquid; the taint of the land, I suppose.

"I feel like I have been accosted and given two good clouts to the jaw," I reply pleasantly. "My jaw might have cracked, or it could be dislocated, but I haven't bothered to check."

_One night, I woke up, and it was dark, without the moonlight. I blinked several times, allowing my eyes to adjust to it. Maedhros I heard sleeping quietly in the next room, undisturbed, but Fingon was most likely by his side, holding his left hand. I heard that they shifted the bed to the other side of the room to accommodate, to compensate for comfort and adjustment._

_Or perhaps __**readjustment,**__ since we were all doomed to suffer injuries of the flesh either way, for there is no war without wounds._

_And then I realized I did not feel my right hand._

_Slowly, to my growing and ascending horror, nearing unbearable insanity, I reached for the lyre by my bedside—the bed was a rock either way; it was almost like sleeping on the ships again, except I couldn't afford to set anything on fire this time—and to my relief hit my hand against the hard metal, knocking the instrument to the ground and earning myself an aching hand, because I unfortunately hit the table it had leant against._

_The door burst open and rebounded against the wall, and I sat up once again, a relieved smile on my face._

"_He's gone mad; I know it," said Caranthir flatly, turning away as Celegorm stood in the doorway, remaining and scrutinizing my expression._

"_Why are you smiling?"_

_Would I have any reason to frown, despite a curse hanging over head like a beam with seven nooses, one of them already taut against its own strain?_

"He's calmed down now," noted Curufin, standing in the doorway, his figure casting a shadow over Celegorm and me, "though he probably won't remember any of it the next day."

Celegorm rose to his full height with a sigh. Then he glanced at me. "Maglor, what did you do to provoke a hit from Maedhros?"

I stood up as well and smiled, ignoring the pain that accompanied this action. "I was the first person he saw."

I know that my brothers consider me mad, for smiling at the most inconvenient times, but I only smile…

…because no one else will.


End file.
